Free Red Queen by Christina Henry Page A

mountains and the desert for nothing?
    And there was something else too—that conversation that Alice might have heard, or might have dreamed. The conversationof three enormous shadows in the night, who talked of “her,” and the source of the light that Alice and Hatcher had seen as they passed through the scorched land.
    Alice found there were too many worries, too many unknowns that may or may not affect their journey. Her sharp fear (of both the goblin and Hatcher) had faded, leaving her drained and exhausted. Her head nodded forward on her chest and she jolted upright, terrified of falling from her insecure perch. She could not drift off to sleep here. It was not safe.
    She listened to the settling forest, all the animals and birds and trees quieting down for the night. Her own heart quieted as she peered up at the stars, the few little specks of light that she could see through the leaves. The breeze was cold, and though she was slightly disoriented by their time on the path, she thought it came from the mountains.
    It will be cold there,
she thought.
There is snow on the peaks.
    Alice had never seen snow like they got in the northern countries. In the City a few flakes would fall occasionally, hardly enough to blanket the street before turning into a grey, slushy mess. She wondered what it would be like to walk through thick carpets of snow, and perhaps see a snow bear, like in the stories.
    A bear that would turn into a prince,
she thought, and then smiled sadly to herself. Her prince was not a bear, but a madman. Alice had learned that you could not choose whom to love. If royalty appeared out of nowhere and offered her a future, she would have to turn away from it, because Alice could never loveany other but the one with grey eyes and bloodstained hands. Was he thinking of her right now, wondering why she had not followed him? Or was he lost in the thrill of the hunt, not to remember her until morning and regret set in?
    She shivered as the wind blew again, and wrapped her arms together, hunching her shoulders.
    Cold. So cold.
    Her eyelids drifted downward; her breathing was smooth and even. Her eyes snapped open again, and she adjusted herself on the branch.
I can’t fall. I can’t fall. I must stay awake.
    But it was cold, and the cold made her sleepier than she already was.
    Cold. So cold.
    Alice stood before a palace made of glass, perched on the highest peak of the highest mountain. Her hands shook so hard she could barely feel them and when she glanced down she saw her fingertips were blue. She could not feel her feet inside her boots, and her teeth clattered together.
    The palace glittered in the sunlight, more beautiful than any building Alice had ever seen. But it was a cold beauty, and something was wrong here. Something very wrong. She cocked her head to one side, listening. The wind blew shards into her ear that sang an icy song, but underneath that sound there was something more. A long, high laugh, a woman’s laugh that held no joy.
    And there was screaming. The children were screaming.
    The sound was so terrible, so full of heartbreak, that Alicegrabbed her ears and covered them, trying to block it out, trying to pretend she had never heard such a noise.
    The screaming wound inside her ear and up into Alice’s brain, lodging itself there, deep inside so that it permeated her bones and blood and flesh so that she would always hear it, sleeping and waking, as long as the children were screaming.
    They were screaming for her.
    No,
she thought.
No.
    And she ran, and was heedless of where her steps carried her, and her boots skidded on the ice and she went over the edge of the peak, the highest peak of the highest mountain, and felt herself falling away into nothing, but the screaming followed her all the way down, so that even in death she would not escape those terrible cries.
    Her eyes opened, and she was falling, really falling. Despite all her precautions she had drifted off